A project I am working on is a solar tracker. It uses 4 analog inputs and one digital ouput. I thought it'd be cool if it could be controlled by an inexpensive 8 pin device such as the ATTiny85. What puzzles me about using a micro controller without the aid of the Arduino platform is troubleshooting the code which is normally done on an Arduino using the serial monitor. How is this done? - Scotty

Personally, I use ATMEGA8-16, which sell for around $1.50 shipped- and has all the resources of the 328 except less flash. I'm soon going to be picking up a 644 to play with and a couple of tiny's, but for the first step off the "standard" 328, I would recommend that you go within the same line so as to get used to flashing a bootloader (or not), getting the right config files, etc isn't quite so "new".

A long as you stick to ATtiny8 compatible command then debug on the UNO and then strip Serial stuff and change pin numbers to suit tiny. Also maybe a simple LED (if you have spare pin) that you turn on/off in interesting parts of the code.

I might seem like an idiot but remember it takes one to know one.Forum user generally fall into three categories (the good, the bad & the a**hole) what category do you fit in?

You have several options for debugging a Attiny85 using the serial monitor

SoftwareSerialTinyDebugSerial

These options require that you connect a Serial/USB connector to the tiny when you want to communicate with it (and remove your programmer)

TinyISP:Serial RelayKnock-BangNull debugger

http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,123388.30.html

With these you can leave all the wires from the programmer (Arduino) and use the serial monitor with a single command.A big thank to Coding Badly for this solution.The one that feels most Arduino-like is Serial-Relay in my opinion.